Like Weeping Gods Like Screaming Demons
by annabellejones712
Summary: War is a dreadful thing. Closes the heart, breaks the mind, even if the cracks aren't visible. Fuinjutsu is key to defeat or victory. Natural chakra makes up both time and the world. Mixed together, what does it create? Weeping Gods. Screaming Demons.


**Disclaimer** : I Do NOT own Naruto. Only plot and my ideas.

 **Warnings** : Blood, death, cursing, etc.

 **A/N** : Hello. _Split on the Precipice_ is on hiatus. Unfortunately, I get bored rather easily with things. :( I just wanted to _try_ a time travel fanfiction and see how it goes.

* * *

The Fourth Shinobi World War was essentially a six year tug-of-war between the remaining shinobi countries and Madara. One side gained a biju or three and wrecked havoc, then the other side reclaimed them and did the same. Back and forth, pushing forward to destroy hidden bases and retreating back to avoid casualties and great chakra losses.

Fatally wounded volunteers and those who had nothing else to lose on the shinobi side came forward to allow themselves to be used in Edo Tensei; legions of White Zetsu took the volunteers' places in Madara's armies. Back and forth, poisons flooded encampments, summons, katon, futon, doton, raiton, suiton and mokuton jutsu, explosions and weaponry took out resources and soldiers, seals were used to hide conversations and plans, summons, scouts and sensors sent to track movement.

Death flooded the shinobi world.

All for peace.

* * *

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"Come on!" He growled at the seal. Chakra laced the delicate art on the paper. "Work, Shinigami damn you!" Then, the chakra flickered and went out against the black ink. _"Fuck!"_ He spat, stepping back from it to inspect it in broader detail. He tossed it back on the tiny work desk, seals etched onto the walls of his doton-made hut which kept any Zetsu out. He ran a hand through his hair and rumbled again, low in his chest in anger.

It was _meant_ to absorb and destroy all chakra and the object(s) the chakra was in, targeted in the seal. A small glass orb with his own amber chakra was what the seal was to target. If he could just get the damned thing to work, it could be used on Zetsu, or even Madara.

He sighed and sat in the chair next to the desk, tossing the orb up and catching it. Four and a half months of work was what had brought him to the place he was now. One of the seals on his walls burned with a frozen gray tint and he cursed as, distracted, he let the orb shatter in a swirl of dissolving amber. A flare of chakra had a skin color seal blooming on his cheek as he stood and strode to the door, allowing him to breathe as surely as the thick poison clouds were rolling in.

Then he paused as something curled around his chakra. He jerked and turned frantically. The seal on his desk gleamed with amber-gold chakra and clear blue eyes widened. "N-"

Then the world stopped. And he was gone.

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* * *

Humans are not meant to displace time and go back, or even forward. Summons are able to do so, as their worlds are embedded and eclipsed by the woven threads of natural chakra and their use of senjutsu which mixes with their chakra and souls. The biju can do so as well, made of natural chakra as they are.

To displace time as a human, is as dangerous as breathing, and then simply not - nothing would happen but the utter stripping of their chakra and fracturing of their soul from their body in an instant. In other words, instant death.

To displace time as a human sage, laced with natural chakra and tainted completely with biju chakra...it can be done. Painfully done, but done all the same.

* * *

His breathing was ragged. There was drying blood on his lips, in his nose, his hair, and lacing his throat and lungs. The air was cool but dry, the feeling of Hi no Kuni at night. But it was a long forgotten sensation. An old sensation. Why did he feel it? Taste it? When he cracked opened his eyes, see it? Hi no Kuni was destroyed by war.

He lay on his stomach, half sprawled in a manner that he knew was vulnerable to any and every attack. So he moved. Slowly but sharply, he rose to his feet and kicked dirt over his small splatters of blood, staggering a few steps and dropping to his knees, each breath burning. He could feel his chakra coiling slowly. His strength was down and he was vulnerable.

He pulled himself up, still staggering faintly, limping for no seen reason except everything hurt like Madara had half torn, half melted his flesh from his bones again. He heaved himself to a copse of trees and soft grass that only Hi no Kuni could produce.

 _'Place unknown, but somehow looks to be Hi no Kuni, the time is_ _middle of the night, around 2 am,'_ his mind supplied from the dark, _'chakra at half strength,'_ he glanced at his seals, relieved as hell they were still there and at the briefest touch of chakra, still working as he unsealed a farmer's clothes and two pouches of shuriken and kunai with seals dappled over the weapons.

Biju chakra was already starting to curl over him and heal whatever the hell was wrong with him, although slowly. _'The last thing I remember happening...'_ He paused, frowning. Then he paled, a white ghost standing out in the darkness. _'The camp was being attacked with poison. My seal snapped around my chakra...and now I'm here, which looks and seems for all intents to be Hi no Kuni.'_

It took him less than a second to sense everything living for miles around: no shinobi. He flickered through several versions of 'kai' and a short stunt of biju enhanced sensing and kai before he adhered to the fact that it was no genjutsu and no fuinjutsu or poison created hallucination.

Leaning against the tree, he struggled to strip and replace his gray-brown shinobi clothes with the farmer's outfit, refilling the storage seals on his hands, neck and hips with weapons. _'What I know: My seal may have dragged me back in time. This is most likely Hi no Kuni, before the Fourth Shinobi War. I, Uzumaki Naruto, am vulnerable, with no village, allies or resources except_ _what I have sealed and what I will steal. I am slightly wounded, may be fully healed in the next day or so with slightly less than half of my normal chakra stores and am posing as a farmer who met with bandits, but only slightly injured.'_

Naruto sagged to his knees again, raising his hand to touch the blood on his lips and hair. _'I need to clean myself up.'_ A seal melted onto skin and the blood vanished from his throat, lungs, hair, nose and lips. He was too exhausted to hunt for water or drag things from his seals to clean. His flesh still felt torn and melted. He still had enough chakra to create seals, though.

A second seal made his shinobi uniform look like a worn, tattered coat, stained with spots of blood and dirt. Two more seals spread over the ground; one to alert him to anything that had chakra coils that were even slightly restrained and one to conceal him and any noise he might make, dissolve his scent and make his area a place others took no notice of. A seal on his back muted his chakra coils to civilian level.

The fact that he could still control his chakra that much gave him hope that things weren't as fucked up as he feared. A single extra scan of the area for chakra signatures proved that nothing was nearby and Naruto sank to the ground completely, piling his shinobi uniform to become a pillow of sorts and dropped his head to it.

* * *

He woke with a jerk, unsealing kunai in a single motion as something - _someone_ \- flickered over the treetops twelve feet away, chakra coils signaling mid-tokubetsu jonin rank with strong raiton influences.

Naruto slid to his feet, pleased to feel that most of his chakra was once again there and his body merely felt as if he'd been lightly sparring with Gai. Then, something else caught his attention: the feeling of Hinata's chakra coils, only tiny. Like, kid tiny. _'The fuck? Am I actually that far in the past? The Hyuuga affair?'_ He let his seals vanish, exempting the one on his back and frowned as he moved to go forward, yanking aside the vicious memories of his friend choking on her own blood from acid.

 _'Didn't Hinata tell me that the Kumo delegate was stopped **in** Konoha by Neji's father? How the hell did they get all the way out here?'_ He strung out his senses and found three more Kumo shinobi heading the way of the one that had just passed. Two seemed wounded, but there was no Konoha team anywhere near them. Naruto balanced the pros and cons.

 _'If I help, I reveal myself to Konoha as a foreign, possibly nukenin, even with fuinjutsu disguises. But with no Konoha teams, they might actually get to Kumo. I can't summon or use any version of Rasengan because right now the only toad summoner and main Rasengan user is Jiraiya and Hinata's sure to remember something about toads in the fight or after. But...'_ he pressed his lips together, _'damn it. I'm helping anyway. Shoulda been obvious. Just have to be fast.'_

The three Kumo nin were about two miles off. The shinobi with Hinata was now half a mile. _'Hmm.'_ Less than a second later, he had three kage bunshin setting nasty traps as he darted after Hinata. A seal changed his golden blonde to reddish black, his eyes to dark gray and his skin to a warm gold.

He kept Hinata's chakra in his range and within three minutes had caught up to the Kumo shinobi. He was carrying a sack, hung loosely over his shoulder. The active tiny spikes of chakra showed that the girl was still awake. Why, Naruto had no clue, but he was fine with it. _'One, two, three.'_

A seal-less shunshin brought him in front of the shinobi who didn't have time to blink as a kunai sliced across his throat and the sack was pulled from his back. Naruto watched the nin sprint-stagger a few paces forward in his momentum before stumbling to face plant with a thud, gurgling and leaking precious blood. Naruto set the sack carefully down and untied it.

"Hyuuga Hinata?" The memories spread over his mind - _N-Naruto-please-stay_ \- but he crushed them and watched as the bruised and terrified three year old version of his friend looked at him with scared white eyes. "You are Hyuuga Hinata?" She nodded very slowly. "I'm here to take you back to Konoha. You scared quite a few people when you vanished, Hyuuga-san."

She clenched her hands together, shaking. He saw that smears of tears and snot had collected on her face and arms. "I'm going to do something that'll make your bruises go away, okay? Can I do that?"

Naruto cursed the Kumo nin to hell and back as she eyed him with wary tears before nodding slowly. "Can you hold out your hand?" She did so shakily. He gently grasped her hand and let his amber chakra swirl over her palm. She stared with wary undisguised awe. He gave a sad smile. The chakra wasn't necessary, but he figured it would calm her down some. He let the seal trace of her palm and vanish. Her bruises, dried tears and snot disappeared instantly.

Little Hinata stared at her arms and he gave her a slightly more brighter smile and she returned it faintly.

"T-thank you." She murmured, staring at her arms for another second. Naruto nodded halfheartedly when she looked up at him, but went to focus on his chakra sensing as the kage bunshin hadn't popped yet. Then they did.

He sifted through the brief memories of setting traps to finding that the Kumo shinobi were caught in the traps almost immediantly, razor wire flaying skin and muscle where it could and kunai burying into flesh where it couldn't. All dead and sealed into a storage scroll hidden in a tree. Their weapons and supplies were in a second scroll next to the other. There was sharp raging satisfaction at that.

The only good enemies were dead ones.

Naruto took all of the dead shinobi's weapons and supplies before sealing away the body and smoothing dirt over the blood. He knew she watched him with wide eyes as he took stole from the Kumo nin, sealed him away and kicked up the dirt. It would be very scary for a three year old to see that, even a shinobi raised three year old.

"I'll take you home, Hyuuga-san. May I pick you up? It'll be faster." She was wary again, but let him cradle her. "You may want to close your eyes." He felt more than saw she followed his advice as he darted forward, as fast as a tokubetsu jonin level shunshin without the shunshin to conserve chakra. He marveled at the amount of trust she put in him as her savior and as one who said he knew Konoha. It was dangerous. But he said nothing.

Once at the grove of trees, he leapt up into the oak that held the scrolls, blinking at her gasp of shock. "Eh, sorry." He said as he hopped back down and with a twitch of chakra sealed the scroll with Hinata's kidnapper into the one with the other three. She pressed her face into his shoulder as he tossed out his senses and started to run again. _'I'll make it to Konoha in about two and a half hours at my pace.'_ Naruto twitched as he felt Hinata clutch his shoulder, still trembling lightly when he leapt over a fallen tree.

Thirty minutes to Konoha, he felt her finally settle down. "You were very brave, Hyuuga-san. You'll make a good shinobi." He said quietly as they ran. There was surprise in her body language when he spoke and doubt when his words settled into the girl.

"Tou-san...h-he says I'm too n-nice." Naruto narrowed his eyes.

"You can be strong. You are strong. Strong and brave." He said calmly. "Senju Hashirama, the First Hokage of Konoha, was strong and kind as well. He didn't want children - or anybody, really - to suffer, so he built Konoha. He was strong and kind enough that other countries thought that shinobi villages were a good idea and created their own." There was more surprise from little Hinata as she heard him. "Being kind isn't something you can do to your enemies unless you have the power of a Kage. But it's something you can do to your comrades and family. Show them your strength and they will accept your kindness."

There was a calm, peaceful silence for the rest of the way. Naruto eagerly drank in the sights, sounds and scents of Hi no Kuni undamaged by bloodshed, war and slaughter. The late morning was turning to afternoon as they drew close to Konoha's gates.

He gently stopped several yards from the road that opened up into the front of the gates, still hidden by forest. He set little Hinata down and stared at the gates, remembering when they'd been ripped apart by Zetsu's giant root jutsu and burned with the rest of Konoha.

"Shinobi-san?" He realized his breathing was...harsher. He gave her a small smile and knelt next to her.

"The Hokage will probably talk to you, along with your tou-san." He unsealed and handed her the scroll with the dead Kumo nin. "Here. And remember: you're as strong and kind as Hashirama. Never let anyone tell you differently." She stared at him, mouth opened slightly.

"You're...going?" Naruto tilted his head.

"I am not a Konoha shinobi, little Hyuuga. I may aid them in their times of need, but I am not one of you. I'm sorry. Please go up to the gate."

"N-no!" She clamped onto his arm and he stilled. "P-please stay! Please!"

 _"N-Naruto-please-stay-"GlassywhiteeyesbloodstainedclothesblooddrippingfromhernoseandmouthICAN'THELPSORRYI'MSORRYSOSORRYDON'TDIE!-_

He jerked backwards, sending Hinata falling on her butt as he staggered away, clamping a hand over his eyes, trembling. The stench of blood clotted his mouth and nose as he stepped back. Then, it was gone and all he was left with was a child who was Hinata, but wasn't, dying but not. And a future that wouldn't exist.

He fled.


End file.
